Complications (A Sequel To Know Your Enemy)
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Chapter 4 Now Up!!!!!!!!!!!
1. Chapter 1, in which we are menaced by al...

A world hangs in a universe of blackness, turning gently

A world hangs in a universe of blackness, turning gently. A green world, blue oceans gleaming, fretted with layers of snowy cloud. On the screens of the approaching cruiser it looks utterly harmless and rather pretty.

"Is that the one?" 

"It is indeed. Third planet of a golden G-type star, oxygen-based atmosphere, carbon-based lifeforms. Earth."

"Where should we start?"

"Heh. Let's go abduct a couple of the meat things and see what we have to deal with."

"Can I do horrible experiments on them?"

"Sure! Then we can turn them inside out and put them back, and see if anyone notices. Then we destroy the planet."

"This is going to be the best interstellar rest stop _ever_ built."

Dib's wide eyes widened further. If he had just heard what he thought he had, there was no time to spare. Earth was in even greater danger than before! They were going to destroy the planet to build some kind of alien truck stop! He hurried downstairs from his observatory. Gaz was installed on the couch, playing her Gameslave.

"Gaz, where's Dad?"

"Taping his show. Then he has to invent a time machine, or something. Don't bug me."

"Gaz, this is important!" Dib shouted, running a hand through his unruly hair. "Earth is in mortal danger!"

"Earth is always in mortal danger," she said, looking up, "according to you."

"Well, I'm right! Aliens are gonna destroy the planet and build a truck stop here!"

Gaz snickered, her attention back on the game. "You mean this isn't Zim's fault?"

"I bet it has something to do with him," Dib muttered darkly. "I have to tell Dad! We've got to do something, Gaz, we can't just sit here and let Earth be destroyed."

She sighed. "Dib, give me one good reason why I should believe you?"

"Because I'm right! I'm always right!"

"Not good enough. Go away, Dib, this is a difficult level."

Fuming, Dib hurried back to his room. It would serve her right if the aliens _did_ destroy Earth. Skeptics. He hated skeptics. Logging on to his Swollen Eyeball Society network, he searched for something, anything, that might help.

"Lalalalalalala! Lalalalalalala! Lalalalalalala! Lalalalalalala! Lalalala—"

"Would you _PLEASE_ turn that crap off?" Zim rubbed at his forehead, feeling a migraine beginning to throb. "Gir, I'm trying to get some work done here. There's an unfamiliar ion signature approaching Earth."

"What's that?"

"Someone's coming. And I don't know who they are."

"Yaaaay!" Gir bounced happily around the observatory. "I'm gonna dance like a monkey!"

"No, Gir, that's bad. Nobody should even be in this sector of space. This is Irken property." He sighed, punched in some coordinates. The Earthinoids' network of satellites kept screwing up his signal. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Gir bounced over to him. "Awwww! Somebody needs a hug!"

Zim groaned. "Get _off_ me, Gir. Go play with the gnomes, or something."

"Gnomes are mean," Gir chirped. "They win the starin' game all the time!" Zim quirked an eyebrow at him, but decided not to ask.

"If I give you a cupcake, will you go away?"

"Mmmmmm...." the little bot mused, head tipped to one side. "No."

"You sure? Cupcake, Gir....?"

"I love cupcakes!" He caught the rather stale one Zim tossed to him and disappeared upstairs, possibly to stare at the gnomes. Alone again, Zim bent once more over his controls. He had to know who was coming, and why. 

"Ooh! Look, down there! Some kind of large settlement!"

"Yeah. Hey, you want to go abduct subjects?"

"Definitely. Which runner should we take?"

"I think the saucer. It seems appropriate."

The bridge of the cruiser is suddenly empty. On the massive screens the Earth is so close individual cities can be picked out, glowing with their massed streetlamps. The faint clang of docking bay doors opening can be heard, and shortly a sleek saucer-shaped craft appears on screen, slicing down through the atmosphere with a faint whining sound. 

Dib was in the back yard with his spotter scope, trying to see if any of the satellites he knew were out of place, when it happened. Time after time he had imagined this, the silver disk sliding out of the darkness ablaze with spinning lights and coming to hover over the city. He half expected a voice like Karellen's in _Childhood's End_ to boom out across the sky, but the only noise was a high-pitched hum. He stood transfixed as the ship drifted easily closer; it was only when its shadow had reached the streetlight on the corner that he turned and shrieked "GAZ!" to the silent house.

"What?" She was standing at her window in pyjamas. "Stop yelling like that, you freak."

"Gaz! Look up!"

She did, and slowly her eyes opened as wide as Dib's, their almond-gold strangely muted in the odd half-light. "Holy.....That's not Zim." She disappeared from the window, and a moment later came running out to join Dib in the yard. 

"I _told_ you," said Dib, but his voice held no note of triumph. The air seemed suddenly very cold around them. Gaz wondered what it would be like, when the death beams finally erupted from the saucer. She knew that was going to happen. It always did, in the movies and in her games. 

_I wish Zim was here,_ she thought suddenly, and felt like crying. She still didn't understand what had happened between them last month, when he and Dib had been so ill, but she couldn't ignore it. There was something new in her mind every time she saw the green boy. Something frighteningly powerful.

She looked up to the saucer, which had paused over their house. Everything she'd ever known to be true was falling to ashes. She didn't know what to believe anymore. Dib's hand found hers, and clung tight enough to hurt.

They gasped as a hole irised open on the bottom of the saucer.

And time froze.

Only a squirrel, huddled trembling against the wall of the house, watched the boy and the girl, locked in time, rise slowly into the sky on a ray of dark blue light. Only the squirrel saw the look of abject horror on their faces, as the hatch slid shut behind them, and the ship shimmered and was gone. 


	2. Chapter 2, in which aliens do unpleasant...

Complications chapter 2

Complications chapter 2

(note: I'm writing this in a very odd frame of mind, so it might be a little incomprehensible.)

In the red dimness of Zim's underground lab, alarm klaxons wailed to life. Zim, who had lapsed into exhausted sleep two hours before, jerked awake. All his screens were flashing with proximity alerts. 

"Computer! What's happening?"

"Unknown spacecraft in local airspace. Axial coordinates five-three-twelve."

Zim called up a 3-D grid model of the neighborhood, and gasped. The spaceship, indicated with a pulsing red dot, was hovering directly over the Membrane house. _Gaz_, he thought, frightened at the depth of emotion the name called up inside him. _Gaz is in danger._

He watched, frozen, as the ion signature of the spaceship altered and faded. They were still there, close, but invisible to radar scopes. He punched in a command to power up the Voot Runner and hurried up to the roof hangar.

Gir was sitting on top of the curvilinear ship, staring vacantly into space. "Gir!" Zim yelled. "Get in! We haven't got much time!"

"Carrots?" inquired Gir, bouncing off the top of the canopy and landing on his head. "Wheee! I'm a thermos!"

"That's nice," muttered Zim as he started the engines. "Get _in_, Gir. And quit playing with the radio. I've got to concentrate." Gir found classical music on the Runner's stereo and began to dance along to Mozart's Concerto in D Minor. Zim sighed, but ignored him, and guided the Runner up through the opening doors and out into the green night sky. On the scopes he could just make out a dim radar echo of something very, very big lurking just outside the limit of the Earth's ionosphere. _Mother of Irk_, he thought, _that looks like a Cordanian destroyer...._

Cordan was the galaxy's mercenary force. The Cordanians would do anything for credits, and they generally possessed far more advanced weaponry than anyone else, even the Imperial Armada. He knew the Tallests had called in a couple of Cordanian star-destroyers to get rid of a pesky moon that was in the way of their projected resort planet. And Earth had exactly no military capability off the surface of the planet. No one had ever even heard of it, so no one would bother to send a Cordanian destroyer to obliterate it because of a perceived threat. _No_, he thought, _this is demolition. Has to be. _

Earth is mine! If anyone's going to destroy it, it's gonna be me. And I didn't go through all that crap with the Planet Jackers to have my planet blown up by a bunch of mercenary idiots!

And besides. They've got Gaz.

He wasn't sure of that, but he thought it was likely. And they'd have Dib too. Curses. Perhaps he could leave Dib with them as an exchange for leaving Earth alone. 

He ramped up the power to the Runner's engines, hurtling up through the layers of the atmosphere. Around him the green darkness gave way to the jeweled blackness of space, and as always he felt a slight shiver of relief at being out in that immensity. Irkens were born and bred in space. Planets always gave him slight claustrophobia. 

***************************************************************

It was cold. Bright and cold. There was a faint smell of alcohol or some similar volatile disinfectant, and the light hurt her eyes. She managed to focus, after some effort, and looked around.

Gaz lay on a steel floor in a steel cell. There was a small grate in the floor, and air vents pierced the walls just below the ceiling. A door made of something like plexiglass separated her from a corridor with equally sterile metal walls. She rolled over and tried to stretch, but her hands were bound behind her with some kind of metal cuffs.

She tried to remember what had happened. There had been something in the sky.....Dib yelling at her, trying to get her to look up, and then she had been standing hand in hand with him as a wave of intense cold washed over her and the world ceased to turn. 

An alien spaceship. Heh. They'd been abducted by aliens.

Gaz started to laugh, too loudly, a shrill sound in that echoing box of a room. Except it sounded more like screaming. Laughing and screaming until something came down the hallway, opened the crysteel door, and pressed an injection gun against the side of her neck. Gaz's vision greyed out, and she slumped back to the cold metal floor, once more lost in blackness.

_Squealy little thing,_ thought the Cordanian, tossing the injector from claw to claw. _The male was worse, though. Ever so much worse. We had to do some really intensive treatment before he would shut up. Kept talking about mysterious mysteries, or something. We really picked a strange pair._

"Found anything interesting?" he asked as he came back into the main dissection room. The male specimen was lying unconscious on a metal table, tubes leading to the great vein in his left arm. A sample container was slowly filling with dark blood. 

"Nah," said the other Cordanian. "Typical carbon-based bipedal humanoid. Their blood seems to have an iron component I've not seen before. And I'm getting bizarre fluctuations in the brain-waves, but that could just be a side-effect of the drug."

"I love doing this," said the first one. "It's so exciting. We can learn so much."

"I know. It's like unwrapping a surprise present."

*********************************************************************************

The Voot Runner slowed as the Cordanian destroyer came into view. Looking like a fly advancing on an elephant, the little purple ship approached the behemoth, all jamming systems up, running in stealth mode. "I was right," muttered Zim. "Cordanians. They're going to destroy Earth."

"Wheeeee! Can I watch?"

"No, Gir, that's bad. No one except us gets to destroy Earth."

"Aww," said Gir, but got distracted by the radar scope. "Wow! Flashy!"

Zim guided the cruiser in under low power, and set it down gently under the belly of the destroyer, locking on with powerful electromagnets before cutting a hole in the three-layered hull and slipping silently inside. That much was easy. That much was always easy. Getting the Cordanians to go away would be a little harder to achieve. "Gir!" he hissed. "Stay with the ship. If anything happens let me know as soon as you can. And stay quiet!"

Gir's eyes flashed red for a moment and he saluted. Zim was smarter than to believe Gir would actually do as he was told, but he could only hope for the best. They had broken into an access corridor which hadn't been used recently, judging by the layers of space dust on the floor. As he recalled, Cordanian ships were designed with the command module located centrally; cargo space and holding cells were arranged above and below the bridge proper. First, he had to find Gaz, and Dib if he were here. He sighed, knowing he'd have to decide what to do with the human when he found them. Then, he had to dissuade the Cordanians from destroying his assigned planet. 


	3. Chapter 3 in which Zim is Heroic

Complications chapter 3

Complications chapter 3

When we last saw our heroes, Dib was well on the way to being a subject in a hideous alien experiment, Gaz was languishing in durance vile, and Zim had just broken into the Cordanian dreadnought. He is currently hurrying through the air ducts (of course there are air ducts, haven't you seen enough bad action movies?) of the enemy ship, cursing in Irken, which I will not attempt to transcribe.

Zim figured he was almost to the command center of the ship. These dreadnoughts were always shaped sort of like an Earth avocado, with the massive seed representing the bridge and officers' quarters (and the controls of the weapons of mass destruction). Spying an air vent ahead, he hurried along the ducting until he could see down into the room below.

Heh. Excellent luck. The fully automated control center lay beneath him, sterile and deserted. _There's really no reason why you'd need more than one or two operatives for this sort of mission_, he thought to himself. _Which means that if I distract them there's no one else to stop me doing some major damage to these targeting computers._ He activated his comlink.

"Gir? Do you read me?"

Crackling, and then the buzz of a carrier wave. "Gir, come in." Zim sighed in annoyed resignation. He knew better than to rely on Gir. That had gotten him into trouble before. "Gir!"

"Yeth, mathter?" the bot suddenly replied. Zim made a face.

"What are you _eating_, Gir?"

"Burritos!" Gir sang excitedly, if rather thickly. "I liiiiike burritos!"

"That's nice, Gir, but I need you to concentrate. I need your help."

He heard the faint clang as Gir saluted. "Yes, master!"

"Disengage the Runner and go distract the Cordanians. Call them and talk to them about burritos, or something. I need you to buy me some time."

"Wheeeeeeee!" cried Gir, and shut off the transmission. Hopefully he'd manage not to crash the Runner into anything, or get it shot to pieces. Zim had other things to worry about. 

He dropped down into the command room and quickly began accessing the targeting programs. As he worked, gloved fingers flying over the controls, he couldn't stop his mind drifting to the thought of Gaz. What if she was really here, captured, perhaps being tortured....?

_Stop it_, he told himself firmly. _And even if she is here, Dib's here too. You've got that to look forward to. Concentrate on what you're doing._

Nevertheless he kept seeing a pair of large tawny-gold eyes, a fall of violet hair. So much had happened in the short time she'd been at his house, and he could hardly remember most of it through the haze of fever and pain. He still hadn't come to terms with the bizarre contradictions implicit in his feelings for her, and he was dreadfully afraid he never would. He was on Earth to rule over the pitiful humans, not obsess over one of them. Yet she had shown him something he had never seen before. Not in his entire existence had anyone cared for him. Irkens didn't do that sort of thing.

_Perhaps we should_, he thought. _We might be more successful._

He was into the mainframe. Systematically he began to delete command after command, erasing all trace of a programmed mission to this sector of space. Then he turned his attention to the firing controls for the massive demolition lasers, and shut them down as well. The ship was now defenseless. If he wanted, he could hijack it and take it back to the Massive. _Look_, he could hear himself saying happily to the Tallests. _Look what I caught. And you said I'd never amount to anything._

Go away, Zim. Purple and Red would fold their arms and stare at him. _You abandoned your mission to steal a Cordanian spaceship when we're not actually at war with them? Back to Foodcourtia with you._

He sighed. Querying the computers one last time, he suddenly saw something that made him go cold all over. Tabulating results from a hematocrit.

Someone somewhere on the ship was feeding data into a computer; data regarding the makeup of a human's blood. Zim wondered sickly if the hematocrit readings had been taken post-mortem....

****************************************

"It's your turn," said the thing, and the crysteel door to Gaz's cell whooshed open. She was huddled in the corner, curled up to try and preserve some heat in the arctic temperatures of the cell, and for a few moments she refused to move. The thing sighed in exasperation and produced a small silver gadget, pointing it at her. White light shot from its tip, enveloping her, and suddenly she was screaming, jerked to her feet, acid pain running down the insides of her bones. Somewhere, in a safe part of her mind, she found herself coolly reflecting that taser technology had advanced a bit on whatever planet these freaks came from. The pain was extraordinary. It seemed to go on even after the thing had put its weapon away and motioned her curtly out of the cell. Her skin hurt all over, as if she'd been dipped in lye.

"Move," said the thing. Gaz moved. It took her quickly along what seemed like miles of identical metal corridors lined with cells like the one she had been lying in. She wondered apathetically what had happened to Dib. Was he dead? Was she going to die?

She found she didn't much care. All she wanted was warmth. There was no fight left in her; even if she'd had the strength to resist her captors, she wouldn't have. She merely wanted to sleep in a warm place, and wake to find herself......

With Zim. The thought flickered brightly in her fuzzy mind. Zim. There was no reason at all that he would rescue them; no reason for her to believe he either knew or cared about their plight. Yet she began, very slowly, to feel a small and terrible hope burning in her heart. 

**************************************************

Zim hurried along the sterile corridors. Whether it was Gaz or Dib, he was going to collect the humanoid and return them to Earth. As a function of his study of the planet. Yes. Nothing to do with personal feelings whatsoever. He picked up the pace. Faintly he could hear the clank as the Voot Runner disengaged from the hull, and he knew that shortly alarms would go off all over the ship to report a proximity warning for an unknown vessel. According to his readouts, he was close to the laboratory. Presumably the Cordanians had taken their abductees there to commit their experiments. 

__

Gaz. _Oh, Gaz. If it really is you, there's no way I'm leaving you here. Not after what you did for me. And for you, I'd even save your wretched brother from these aliens._

Crap. I'm thinking of them as aliens. That's not good.

He sighed miserably and ran faster.

*********************************************************

Gaz lay on the steel table. The taller of the two aliens had locked her wrists and ankles into cuffs connected to the table, and she couldn't move except to wriggle. And to scream. She'd decided not to scream, though. She wouldn't give them that much satisfaction. 

They'd stripped off her dress, leaving her in a shirt and leggings, and attached sensors to her chest. One of them was wheeling over a gigantic machine encrusted with glowing LEDs, and the other stood at what looked like a control console. She wondered absently what was happening to Dib, but couldn't turn her head to see. The hope of Zim's rescue was quickly fading into a dark blossom in her mind. Whatever happened, she vowed, she would die well. 

_Am I really thinking this_? she wondered. _Two hours ago I was asleep in my own bed, with nothing more to fear than a history test tomorrow. Now I'm strapped to an alien dissection table; my brother is I don't know where, and things that look like extras from a fifties B-movie are preparing to do unspeakable things to me. And all I can think of is Zim's ruby eyes. What's wrong with me?_

But the machine had begun to crackle with energy, and bright beams of light encapsulated her, and there was simply nothing else to think. 

**************************************************************

Zim leaned against a bulkhead, panting. There was a sudden scream of alarms as the Cordanian ship registered his Voot Runner, outside, piloted by Gir. He found time to wonder vaguely what color Gir's eyes were glowing as the tiny purple ship circled round to face its much larger opponent.

_That doesn't matter now. All that matters is recovering the humans and getting the righteous nazhka out of here. _

He heard footsteps, and a moment later two tall Cordanian officers came pounding by on their way to the bridge. _Heh. I wonder how you'll react to what I did to your computers_. After ascertaining that no one else was going to come roaring along the corridor, he slid out of his hiding place and hurried along the hall towards the Cordanian labs. Doors were sliding shut ahead of him; he put on an extra burst of speed and hurtled through the closing gaps. Just as he hit the floor, rolling, the massive portals closed behind him with a hiss of hydraulics.

He looked up.

He was inside a room the size of Earthling aircraft hangars. Pipes and conduits encrusted the ceiling; the walls were made up of a matrix of screens showing what looked like microscopic views of human blood cells. Distantly, he could see a mass of machinery hunched over a tiny figure strapped to a table, and beside it another figure, half-buried beneath sensors and connections. He sprinted towards them, and his crimson eyes widened as he saw what was being done. 

Dib was stable. They'd drained a lot of his blood and taken some tissue samples, but he was stable. Gaz, on the other hand....

He slammed a fist down on the control panel that corresponded to the machinery hovering over her. The source arm and capsule retreated, the red lights glowing on its housing fading through yellow to standby green. Bending over her, he saw that she was breathing steadily and that only the first part of the experiment had been completed. 

_Years ago, at the Academy. Biology classes. The teaching program had been given the code name of Kell. He had been sitting in the first row, avidly watching as the machinery bent over the test subject and began to infiltrate the systems. Kell had been lecturing on implantations. _

"The most important factor in this operation is the brain of the subject, or at least the primary node of the CNS. The transmogrifier acts primarily on this organ, affecting every other system in the body and bending the subject to the experimentor's will. The chip must be in place before this stage may be completed. Remember that the chip must be situated within the matrix of the subject's CNS."

Shuddering, Zim lifted Gaz's head, turned her so he could see the base of her skull. The Cordanians had set a patch over the insertion point for the chip they'd implanted in her spinal column. He'd managed to distract them just before that chip was activated.

He pulled the sensors from her skin, flinging them disgustedly away, and lifted her in his arms. She was so slight he hardly felt her weight as he lifted her from the table and turned to where Dib lay on his own slab, paler than normal, his eyes sunk in brown shadows. 

_How am I going to get them both out of here?_

"Gir!" he hissed into the comlink. "Bring the cruiser around and link through the hull at these coordinates." He read off the scanner reading for the labs. There wasn't much time; shortly the Cordanians would realize they'd been tricked and hurry back down to make sure their test subjects were secure. Irk was with him, however; almost before he'd begun making emergency plans to take down the Cordanians when they arrived, he heard the clang of two hulls colliding and saw the purple glow of a nionisteel-slicing laser describing a circle in the wall. _Good job, Gir. I'll get you a whole BOX of cupcakes for this night's work. _

The section of hull clanked to the floor, revealing the interior of the Voot Runner. Hoisting Gaz's limp body over his shoulder, Zim tucked Dib beneath his free arm and ran for his ship. 

"Wheeee!" Gir giggled. "I talked to strange tall people!"

"Good, good, good," muttered Zim, strapping his two unconscious passengers firmly into the crash-couches. "Monitor them, Gir. We've got to get out of here, _now_."

"Yessir!" Gir saluted. Zim slid behind the controls of the ship and disengaged from the Cordanian destroyer, leaving a sizeable hole in the hull open to the vacuum of space. As the thruster jets pulled them away from the larger ship, Zim watched injector guns and random medical objects being sucked out into the void. He couldn't hear the howl of atmosphere escaping through the breached hull, but he'd heard it enough times to imagine what the Cordanians were hearing. And since he'd fried most of their control circuitry, they'd have no way to shoot him, even if their damaged triangulation programs could even find his ship to target it. He flung the Runner around in a wide arc, heading straight back towards Earth, and relative safety.


	4. Chapter 4, in which Angst and Romance pl...

Complications chapter 4

Complications chapter 4

In the last installment, we saw Zim managing to both destroy the threat to Earth and collect the Cordanians' two prisoners. The Cordanians are less than happy with this turn of events, but screw them. They suck anyway. Dib has merely lost a lot of blood, but Gaz has had an alien device implanted in her skull. What, on Earth, can Zim do with his two passengers?

_....can't believe this is happening, can't believe I'm doing this..._

Moving with more concern for speed than safety, Zim's Voot Runner screamed down through the atmosphere of Earth, swapping the bejeweled blackness of space for a moonless cloudy night. The sticky orange light of streetlamps was the only illumination in the cul-de-sac where Zim lived, and by that light it is difficult to tell what is real and what is flickering shadow. Anyone watching the strange green house at the end of the road might have taken the Runner's landing for a waking dream, a trick of the dark. The stillness of a summer night once again filled the neighborhood, the faint high-pitched howl of the ship's jets cycling down to a standstill. 

"Computer!" Zim yelled as he popped the cruiser's canopy and lifted Gaz out as gently as he could. "Prepare two therapy couches in the medical unit!"

***************************

Red light pulsed regularly in the warm darkness. Dib drifted easily, sweetly through dreams, as he had done so long ago in his mother's arms. He was utterly weightless, suspended in a gentle world of comfort, aware only of a rhythmic rushing which he eventually supposed to be his own heartbeat. Somewhere in his recent memory he could sense an actinic rush of pain, but he was beyond pain now, far out beyond pain and pleasure, simply floating in the void. 

And as the void embraces him, he begins to dream; and ceasing to dream, begins to remember. 

_Six years old, and running after his mother along the wide white beach they often came to on vacation. Six years old, still two years away from the glasses he'd wear for the rest of his life, one year away from the accident that would change his life forever. Gaz had been five, and could still get away with being carried piggy-back, but he was a big boy now, six years old, and he didn't need to be carried like some kind of baby. _

Oh, how he'd wanted to, though. Especially afterwards, when there would be no more rides, no more swinging from their hands as they walked along. How he had wished he could never grow up.

Gaz hadn't wanted to understand. Neither had he, but he'd had little choice; Dad was no help at all, and none of the others seemed to come up with a convincing story other than the truth. She was dead; she was gone; she was missing in action, absent without leave, vanished, disappeared. The truck driver was mildly concussed and would be facing time for drunk driving. She was simply gone, along with the Volvo wagon and the shopping she'd done that morning. He had understood, but he hadn't wanted to.

And time shifts, and moves ahead suddenly as it does in dreams.

_Ten years old, now, and hardened, at least as much as a kid hardens on the outside after years of struggle. Gaz was addicted to the games, and Dad scarcely spoke two words to them unless prompted. He was alone. Utterly alone. And in that loneliness he discovered his own obsession, and it became a companion for him in a world that had offered him little more than ridicule. His obsession was his life. _

And what kind of a life is it? A darkened one, dimly lit by computer screens and night-vision goggles; a frantic one, ever-watching, ever suspicious. A life that allows no relaxation, no complacency, no fun. 

But he is losing the thread, and the images separate like beads on a broken chain, and fall away from each other; and he is once more floating calmly and comfortably in the red darkness. 

***************************

Zim rubbed his eyes, bleary with exhaustion. Outside the night had given way to lemon-colored dawn, and birds were squeaking absently in the trees. He had managed to extract the implanted chip from Gaz's hindbrain, but he had no idea if she would come out of the coma the Cordanian drugs had induced. 

_When_, he corrected himself firmly. _Not if._

He looked down at her lying white and still under the pink glow of the vitamin-lamp, her violet hair slipping down the pillows like silk, like the strange silvery snow he'd seen on cold planets. She looked very vulnerable and very young, all of a sudden, and he found it hard to believe this was the girl who had saved his own life as well as her brother's with the skill of a seasoned medical officer. _She must have had to grow up fast_, Zim thought. _Too fast. Was she ever allowed to be a child?_

He smoothed the tumbled hair away from her face. _Come on, Gaz. Fight it. You're stronger than this, I know you are, don't give up...._

Abruptly he turned and fiddled with some of the monitoring equipment. This was utterly ridiculous; he had no reason to feel as concerned as he did; he was on this wretched planet to take it over and to subjugate the humans to his will. Why didn't he just toss them out to fend for themselves? Did they deserve his superior alien technology?

He couldn't answer that. Nor could he bring himself to destroy Dib, not even when the human lay utterly defenseless in the cradling arms of Zim's own medicomp. He stared down at that hated face, closed and empty in the depths of unconsciousness, and could not do it.

******************************************

There is a grey shore, a terminus where grey lapping water meets silky grey sand. Mists obscure the horizon, but it feels as if the water goes on forever; as if there is no farther shore. Figures are congregating on the mutable sands, silently. It is as if the ears have been covered with mouse-fur, utterly soft and very quiet.

Gaz waited, with the rest of them. There are no words spoken here; there is no need for them, as there is no need for tears, or joy, or gratitude. There is only the soft greyness, going on forever.

A dim shape takes form, out in the mists over the water. Gently it approaches the shore, pale waves lapping against its prow. The boatman wears a dull grey coat, and his hair hangs over his face; perhaps he has no face. He does not need one, here. With a slow rhythm the single oar rises and falls as he sculls the boat towards the land. There is no sound as it comes to rest on the grey sands. One by one the figures on the shore approach the boat, climb in, take their seats. The boat rides no lower in the water with each additional passenger.

And it is her turn, and she is not entirely unhappy to feel the old, smooth wood beneath her fingers as she begins to board.

But now there is a sound, from somewhere, in that furred silence. A sound which seems to cut through her daze like broken glass, and wake her heart again to pain she thought had ended. Someone was crying, somewhere, far away from the bitter peace of the grey shore.

_No one has cried for me. Ever._

And in the mists she feels a hand take hers and press it, hot with desperation, holding her in a world that had given her up. The strength of that grip wakes her own strength within her, and she begins to feel the shore recede into blackness as she holds tight to the hand that pulls her back. She feels warm wetness on her face. Tears.

In the lab the howls of alarm signals stuttered and died, as Gaz's heartbeat smoothed out again, her breathing deepened, her brainwaves jerked back online. Zim bent over her hand, clasped in his own, his tears falling like rain. He had not known what it was to cry until she had begun to fail, and for long moments he had wondered what was wrong with him, what caused the hitching pain in his chest, the sting in his eyes. Only after his pale tears began to spot her pillow had he understood. He was grieving.

Irkens didn't grieve. It simply wasn't part of their mindset, their society. 

But Zim couldn't convince himself of that, and he had bent over Gaz's limp hand, sobbing as though his five-chambered heart would break. He wished it would. He had never known such agony.

And suddenly it had happened—her vital functions revived, her chest heaved in a sudden deep breath. He was still in shock, still unable to understand what was happening to him, what had just happened to her, when she opened her great gold eyes and found him.

"You're.....crying," she murmured, something Zim couldn't identify flickering in the depths of those eyes. She reached up shakily and caught a tear on the tip of her finger, regarded it with bemused interest. 

"...Gaz......" he managed, helplessly. He had not known his true feelings for her until he had thought her to be dying. What could he tell her? What could he tell himself? Irkens had no word for what he wanted to say. He doubted humans did either.

"Crying...for me...?"

"I thought you were dying!" he hissed. "Your heart was about to stop. I thought....I thought you were...." He broke off, burying his face in his hands.

Gaz's eyes flickered again. Slowly, weakly, she sat up in the bed, took Zim's hands away from his eyes, met his ruby gaze with her gold one. "Hush," she said, and kissed his hands, and put her arms around his neck, and kissed him softly on the lips.

"I...." he gasped. She cut him off.

"...love you, Zim. I love you."

He slid his hands into her hair and sought her mouth with his own, as a dying man in the desert would seek water. The tears that still welled in his closed eyes were tears of pure and unspeakable joy.

She moved all day in the protective circle of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder. Dib still lay under the medicomp's care, regenerating the blood he'd lost to the Cordanian experiments. Gaz's neck still hurt where the chip had been shoved into the back of her brainstem, but she would heal. Gir had disappeared somewhere after they'd returned from space, taking the money Zim had given him for cupcakes along. Presumably he was still ensconced at the 24-7, eating his way through the stock. Zim didn't care. He didn't care about anything except the unbearable sweetness of Gaz's presence in his embrace, the way she seemed to glow. It occurred to him that the cure she'd given him for the alien disease last month had inserted some human blood into his body. Perhaps he was being influenced by human emotions because of that.

He found, quite happily, that he didn't care. Irken relationships had no meaning for him. What he had discovered in that heart-stopping moment when he had thought Gaz was gone forever had changed him. It seemed that, after all, he could love.

Wheeee! Next: The Conclusion. What are they going to tell Dib? What is the Cordanian Guild going to do to Earth? How do they explain their absence to Membrane? And....most importantly....where did Gir go?


End file.
